I have to disagree. For one, I think birds flying into plane engines was common knowledge. It's certainly something I've know for as long as I can remember. An

I have to disagree. For one, I think birds flying into plane engines was common knowledge. It's certainly something I've know for as long as I can remember. And when I got my CS degree we specifically studied accidents where bad software in medical devices killed people. I recall an X-ray machine where the hardware was upgraded and a bunch of software assumptions about when the fuses would blow became wrong. That ended up killing people. And as someone who has written software for medical instruments I can tell you unit test coverage is part of the contracts we sign. The coffin corner only played a small part in the accident but that's how accidents always happen. It's always several small things that go wrong together. A safe airline would not flaunt its safety record, but it's safety practice. Not flying the coffin corner would remove that one part that can go wrong from any future accident scenario. The safe airline having an accident would not automatically bankrupt it, every other airline has had accident and this one would continue with its safer then average practices. However, I agree with you this will never happen because as you say the airlines are a crap commodity business. Even Warren Buffet has mentioned how bad a business airlines are for investors. That's why even though I consider myself a libertarian I want a government mandate to stay out of the coffin corner. We already have much more complex and difficult to enforce regulations on airlines, this one is simple and would be easy to enforce as we already track all planes on rader closely all of the time.